Fred
Retired Staff
Back when I was a teen, in high school, I spent two years living in a dorm. In my second year there, I graduated from a 6-bed room to a 2-bed room. At some point, my dorm-mate was visited by family.
Two people, in their late fifties. He wasn't in the room, so, I told them to wait there and went to fetch him, telling him: "Hey, your grandparents have come to visit". He seemed surprised, and when he followed me back, he went "Dude, these are my parents" with a note of amused exasperation.
I was stunned by the revelation. He was just a year older than I was, but his parents looked like my grandparents.
You see, my mom had me when she was 19. Her parents were in their late thirties. In 1980, that was kind of normal at the time that once you were an adult, you'd probably have children in your early twenties. We were just getting out of the trend of multi-generational homes at the time. At that age, my mom was in her mid-thirties, and my grandparents in their mid-fifties. I can recall a time when there wasn't a single noticeable strand of gray hair on my grandparents head (my grand-dad balded early, though).
The age of my dorm-mate's grandparents was shocking at the time. Nowadays, people have a tendency to wait until they are financially established, so getting children around the thirties is far more common. Our population is also aging, and it's far more common to see a greater frequency of older people wanting to ask/hog for the seats in a bus (though that could also be because I'm on a bus line that leads to a cardiology clinic on its way, so-).
But now, imagine...
You're born an elf. You grow to be in your mid-teens and you don't look much different than a human except that you're built slimmer and while you can have lean muscles, your genetics don't really support the effort of packing more muscle like some of the human bodybuilders seem to manage. But hey, at the pub next to the local trading post, whenever you manage to con a visiting human in a game of darts, you tend to do better where hand-eye coordination is concerned - in general, when you aim for the board, you hit it in the general area you mean to; sometime with some setup, you can hit the bullseye.
When you go back home on the maternal side of your family, you're slightly late for supper, and there's a horde waiting for you around the kitchen and adjoining dinner table. Appart from certain fashion preferences, your mother, grandmother, and great grandmother look practically the same. Your dad, your visiting uncle, grand-dad, and great grand-dad have come back from some afternoon hunting not an hour ago. While your great great-grandmother is gone, your great great grandfather lingers on; he's slowed down too much to go along the outing, but he still contributes with more sendentary chores like fletching.
The cultural clash here is that as we age, we end up feeling mostly the same way we did before, just with more regrets, more mistakes behind us, and bodies that don't quite follow what we want them to do anymore. Even if SARP elves don't actually reach much over a century old, the simple prospect of retained youthfulness through a majority of it changes the family dynamics drastically. A human visitor might not be able to tell at first glance whom your mother is, and might take your grandma and great grandma to be your mother's sister (the latter being obviously the eldest). Where strenuous activities are concerned, your granddad and great granddad are still well able to follow your dad and uncle while out hunting. The window of peak activity (our 20-to-30 years old) within an elf's lifespan would enjoy would easily be 5 times longer. Around 60, you'd see them ceilinging (our 30-40); at 70 they'd obviously grain a few frailties (40-50), and at 80+ they'd be in obvious decline (50+) up to a point where they might reach 100 (looking like a human in his mid-sixties).
That could be a beautiful advantage to hold. It would shape them culturally. Latter generations remaining vivacious would give them more modern relevancy, especially where generational change is involved for us humans. No reason why the great grand-dad couldn't be able to get on a computer and ably search the internet if his son is able to. However, the grand-dad might still think his son is talking nonsense when pining for an hunting rifle, when a bow serves just as well since he remembers how - 40 years ago - there we no guns on the planet and they made do.
Unfortunately...
On Yamatai, most of that doesn't matter. Nekos are born with the skills of an adult, and the approximate worldliness of a teen. Nanomachine nodal construction makes actual hand craftsmanship obsoleted when you can just think and imagine what you want with your digital mind - trial and effort could just be in your head as you simulate with a computer what you want, and voila - skip effort and instant gratification. And lifespan? Yamataians are born looking perfect, have advanced science that make the famed elven potion-making redundant, and to boot, they live eternally because they can just swap bodies, and those bodies barely age and live much longer (hypothetically) than a elf would with even less impairments.
While elves might exceed and stand out from humans, they are unfortunately buried under a culture that holds most of the same advantages and outdoes them in most others. What edge the elves might have culturally and in maturity is going to wane beyond YE 120, where there may be many practically-immortal centennial nekovalkyrja cropping up. It's a rather unfortunate case of natural selection (arguably unnatural) where the elves are outdone by another species - which is a contrast to their situation in other fantasy, where they are often the ones to be super-human.
Unfortunately, for any of the interest in elves, they've truly drawn the short stick where living in Yamatai is concerned. This doesn't mean they're a dead end, as those disadvantages can be challenges that generate stories... but any elf struggling for relevancy in the Empire which is essentially an elitist meritocracy is fighting an uphill battle.
Two people, in their late fifties. He wasn't in the room, so, I told them to wait there and went to fetch him, telling him: "Hey, your grandparents have come to visit". He seemed surprised, and when he followed me back, he went "Dude, these are my parents" with a note of amused exasperation.
I was stunned by the revelation. He was just a year older than I was, but his parents looked like my grandparents.
You see, my mom had me when she was 19. Her parents were in their late thirties. In 1980, that was kind of normal at the time that once you were an adult, you'd probably have children in your early twenties. We were just getting out of the trend of multi-generational homes at the time. At that age, my mom was in her mid-thirties, and my grandparents in their mid-fifties. I can recall a time when there wasn't a single noticeable strand of gray hair on my grandparents head (my grand-dad balded early, though).
The age of my dorm-mate's grandparents was shocking at the time. Nowadays, people have a tendency to wait until they are financially established, so getting children around the thirties is far more common. Our population is also aging, and it's far more common to see a greater frequency of older people wanting to ask/hog for the seats in a bus (though that could also be because I'm on a bus line that leads to a cardiology clinic on its way, so-).
But now, imagine...
You're born an elf. You grow to be in your mid-teens and you don't look much different than a human except that you're built slimmer and while you can have lean muscles, your genetics don't really support the effort of packing more muscle like some of the human bodybuilders seem to manage. But hey, at the pub next to the local trading post, whenever you manage to con a visiting human in a game of darts, you tend to do better where hand-eye coordination is concerned - in general, when you aim for the board, you hit it in the general area you mean to; sometime with some setup, you can hit the bullseye.
When you go back home on the maternal side of your family, you're slightly late for supper, and there's a horde waiting for you around the kitchen and adjoining dinner table. Appart from certain fashion preferences, your mother, grandmother, and great grandmother look practically the same. Your dad, your visiting uncle, grand-dad, and great grand-dad have come back from some afternoon hunting not an hour ago. While your great great-grandmother is gone, your great great grandfather lingers on; he's slowed down too much to go along the outing, but he still contributes with more sendentary chores like fletching.
The cultural clash here is that as we age, we end up feeling mostly the same way we did before, just with more regrets, more mistakes behind us, and bodies that don't quite follow what we want them to do anymore. Even if SARP elves don't actually reach much over a century old, the simple prospect of retained youthfulness through a majority of it changes the family dynamics drastically. A human visitor might not be able to tell at first glance whom your mother is, and might take your grandma and great grandma to be your mother's sister (the latter being obviously the eldest). Where strenuous activities are concerned, your granddad and great granddad are still well able to follow your dad and uncle while out hunting. The window of peak activity (our 20-to-30 years old) within an elf's lifespan would enjoy would easily be 5 times longer. Around 60, you'd see them ceilinging (our 30-40); at 70 they'd obviously grain a few frailties (40-50), and at 80+ they'd be in obvious decline (50+) up to a point where they might reach 100 (looking like a human in his mid-sixties).
That could be a beautiful advantage to hold. It would shape them culturally. Latter generations remaining vivacious would give them more modern relevancy, especially where generational change is involved for us humans. No reason why the great grand-dad couldn't be able to get on a computer and ably search the internet if his son is able to. However, the grand-dad might still think his son is talking nonsense when pining for an hunting rifle, when a bow serves just as well since he remembers how - 40 years ago - there we no guns on the planet and they made do.
Unfortunately...
On Yamatai, most of that doesn't matter. Nekos are born with the skills of an adult, and the approximate worldliness of a teen. Nanomachine nodal construction makes actual hand craftsmanship obsoleted when you can just think and imagine what you want with your digital mind - trial and effort could just be in your head as you simulate with a computer what you want, and voila - skip effort and instant gratification. And lifespan? Yamataians are born looking perfect, have advanced science that make the famed elven potion-making redundant, and to boot, they live eternally because they can just swap bodies, and those bodies barely age and live much longer (hypothetically) than a elf would with even less impairments.
While elves might exceed and stand out from humans, they are unfortunately buried under a culture that holds most of the same advantages and outdoes them in most others. What edge the elves might have culturally and in maturity is going to wane beyond YE 120, where there may be many practically-immortal centennial nekovalkyrja cropping up. It's a rather unfortunate case of natural selection (arguably unnatural) where the elves are outdone by another species - which is a contrast to their situation in other fantasy, where they are often the ones to be super-human.
Unfortunately, for any of the interest in elves, they've truly drawn the short stick where living in Yamatai is concerned. This doesn't mean they're a dead end, as those disadvantages can be challenges that generate stories... but any elf struggling for relevancy in the Empire which is essentially an elitist meritocracy is fighting an uphill battle.
Last edited:
